Associated Press reports that the suicide bomber who carried out the suicide bomb last month unsuccessfully targeting the country’s interior minister was an ex-officer of the Egyptian military. Military officials have declined to comment on the video making the claims posted by Ansar Jerusalem, a militant group inspired by Al Qaeda.
The official has been identified as Waleed Badr. Mr. Badr was wearing a major’s uniform in the video.
An ex-Egyptian army officer carried out the suicide bombing last month that unsuccessfully targeted the country’s interior minister, a video posted online Saturday by al-Qaeda-inspired militants claims.
In the video, Mr. Badr says that the Egyptian army “loves America more than the Egyptians.”
An unnamed source says Badr was fired from the military academy, because he used to criticize his fellow officers for not being “pious”.
One person was killed in the September 5 blast. Twenty-two were injured.
Ansar Jerusalem already claimed responsibility for last week’s bomb attack on a military intelligence compound in the Suez canal city of Ismailia. In addition the group claims responsibility for suicide car bomb attack on a security headquarters in the town of el-Tor, in southern Sinai. The group has also claimed attacking gas pipelines going to Israel and has shooting rockets at Israel.
Attacks in the Sinai peninsula have grown sharply since the Muslim Brotherhood government was ousted in a coup on July 3. The military has countered the increase in attacks with an increase in troop levels.
AP says that in the video, Mr. Badr asks Egyptian Muslims “to sacrifice your lives through the explosive devices and the explosive belts and to kill in the same way they kill.”
